The upload progress bar for the first issue of the prologue comic crept forward slowly while Stelle watched with barely concealed anxiety and March 7th murmured quiet words of encouragement beside her.
It reached the end.
A soft chime confirmed the upload was complete.
Almost at the same moment, Dan Heng called out from across the room: "Web embed sync is done. It's live."
Stelle refreshed the page immediately.
There it was. On the platform she had carefully chosen, one known for its strong creator community and broad range of content, under a brand-new account bearing the official verified badge of Under the Stellar Sky Studio, the first post had quietly gone up.
Title: "Honkai Impact 3rd Prologue Serialization Begins! Fight for All That Is Beautiful in This World!"
Body text: A strange catastrophe known as the Honkai sweeps through the once-peaceful Nagazora City.
The fierce and headstrong Kiana Kaslana. The gentle but resolute Raiden Mei. The cool and hard-to-read Bronya Zaychik.
Their lives collide here. This is the first chapter of a story about girls, battles, protecting what matters, and holding on to hope.
(Attached: reading link, three early character design sheets, and the studio's modest but distinctly styled official website link.)
No paid promotion. No pre-launch buildup. It simply slipped, quiet and unannounced, into the platform's content feed.
The notification confirming the post was live seemed to act as a signal, releasing some of the tension that had been building all morning throughout the office. But that relief gave way almost immediately to a different kind of waiting, heavier and more uncertain.
It was out there now. So what happened next?
Kiana leaned in close to Stelle and anxiously refreshed the page, watching as the view count climbed from single digits to double, then slowly, painfully edged its way toward triple figures.
Comments and shares were almost nonexistent. Only a handful of the default platform responses had come in, the kind left by people who clearly had no idea what they were looking at.
Mei stood beside her, violet eyes fixed on the screen, fingers pressing together without her realizing it.
Bronya hadn't walked over, but a corner of her monitor still had the page pulled up, and she glanced at the numbers every so often.
Dan Heng closed the backend dashboard and turned back to his code, but his keystrokes had slowed down noticeably, as though part of his attention was still somewhere else, waiting.
Arthur watched all of them sitting there, eager and tense at the same time, like people bracing for a verdict. He knew that kind of passive waiting was the fastest way to kill morale.
He clapped his hands once, and everyone looked up.
"Alright. Step one is done. Now we let it breathe." His voice was steady, the way it usually was. "We can't just sit here watching numbers. Our next move is putting together a promotional trailer for the game."
"A trailer?" Kiana turned around. "The game barely exists yet. The prologue isn't even finished. We literally just started it."
"That's why we're calling it a promotional trailer." Arthur walked to the whiteboard and picked up a marker.
"We don't need to show a finished product. What we need is concept, atmosphere, and most importantly, we need potential players to understand what we're building and that it'll be free to play."
"Free?"
It wasn't just Kiana this time. Mei, Dan Heng, and even Bronya from her corner all looked up with the same expression. Stelle and March 7th looked just as puzzled.
In this world's gaming market, especially the space they were targeting with their polished indie-style approach, the dominant models were either premium buy-to-play or free-to-play with paid gating on key items and content.
Free? How was the studio supposed to survive on that? Were they planning to run on goodwill alone?
"Yes. Free."
Arthur wrote the word large on the whiteboard and underlined it twice.
"Our core game content, the main story, the base characters and equipment, the central gameplay, all of it will be available to every player at no cost."
"Then how do we make money?" Stelle couldn't help asking. "Ad revenue? Merch?"
Kiana frowned. "Free means anyone can just walk in. What if it turns into the same disaster as before, with bad-faith players flooding the community?"
Mei added quietly, "Captain, a free-to-play model does lower the barrier to entry and can grow your player base quickly.
But the operational demands that come with it, anti-cheat systems, building a healthy monetization structure, those are enormous challenges. And honestly, free-to-play doesn't have the best reputation in a lot of core gaming communities."
Bronya kept it simple: "Revenue model?"
Dan Heng adjusted his glasses. "On the technical side, going free-to-play would mean a huge jump in server load, data security requirements, and the complexity of the anti-cheat systems.
We'd need a much more solid infrastructure and dedicated operations support." He paused. "With what we have right now, I'm not sure we're there yet."
Everyone had raised real, legitimate concerns. That was exactly what Arthur wanted. He needed all of it out in the open before they could move forward with a shared understanding.
He looked around at each of them, each face carrying its own mix of doubt and worry, and spoke slowly.
"You're all right. Free-to-play means a lower barrier, but it also means more operational pressure and a far more complicated ecosystem to manage. But here's the thing," he said, putting more weight behind the words, "what's free ends up being the most expensive thing of all."
That stopped everyone.
"We're not running a charity. Free-to-play is our hook. It's the first step in getting players through the door and into the world of Honkai."
"Our core monetization will be built around a draw system, something we'll call the Supply system." Arthur sketched a rough gacha machine on the board.
"Players earn a basic in-game currency by playing, completing daily missions, working through the main story, and taking part in events.
That currency can be used to buy some basic supplies, and it can also be spent on Supply draws, where players have a chance to get character shards, weapons, equipment, or fully unlocked items. Drop rates will be posted openly."
"What about players who want to spend real money?" Kiana asked.
"Paying players top up with real money and receive a separate premium currency." Arthur drew another symbol next to the first.
"That currency has two main uses. First, it can be used in the same draw pool as the free currency. Second, it can be used to buy cosmetic items that have no effect on gameplay, things like skins, avatar frames, and visual effects."
He paused and made sure the next part landed.
"Here's what matters. The premium currency that paying players get through purchases and the basic currency that free players earn through time and effort are completely equal inside the draw pool. The pity system and the drop rates are identical for everyone."
"Pity system?" Bronya caught the term.
"Right. After a certain number of pulls without a high-rarity result, players are guaranteed to receive one. That threshold is publicly disclosed and the same for every player."
Arthur finished.
"What that means is that free players, through consistent long-term effort and smart planning, have a real path to getting powerful characters and equipment.
Paying players use their money to shorten that path, to get more attempts and resources sooner.
But they can't just buy their way to winning. They can't gut the core combat and strategy experience for everyone else."
۞۞۞۞
~ Push the story forward with your Power Stones